SEMI Sales and Marketing Excellence Award

SEMI Sales and Marketing Excellence Award

The SEMI Sales and Marketing Excellence Award is a prestigious award is given to recognize and honor an individual or group for outstanding contributions to customers through the creation or implementation of value-added marketing and/or sales concepts or strategies which enhance customer value and further the growth of the semiconductor equipment and materials industry.

SEMI® presents this award each year in memory of Bob Graham whose marketing prowess was unparalleled in our industry. His contributions were numerous and the impact of those contributions is still felt today. To learn more about Bob Graham, please refer to his biography.

The prestige of the SEMI Sales and Marketing Excellence Award, and the enormous legacy ofBob Graham, is reflected in the high caliber of past recipients.

2014: Winfried Kaiser

Mr. Kaiser led ZEISS’s strategic marketing and the company’s collaborations especially with ASML. He is credited with aligning ZEISS to the optical needs of lithography equipment manufacturers and their customers by coordinating three tiers of the semiconductor supply chain: semiconductors, equipment, and advanced optics. These collaborations cover 248nm and 193nm wavelength, as well as liquid immersion (high NA) lens product development and the launch of the EUV program in Europe.

2013: J.C. Kim

Joung Cho (JC) Kim, retired chairman of Edwards Korea Limited, had a major impact on the industry. In 1985, when semiconductor manufacturers used rotary pumps, he introduced Fomblin oil to the Korean market. This reduced pump process problems and resulted in substantial process improvement, higher productivity and cost savings. He also marketed a new "dry" vacuum pump design. He persuaded manufacturers to try the dry pump on their production lines, contributing to higher productivity and a more stable process. In addition, he improved service efficiency for dry pumps by establishing 24-hour/day on-site field service offices in or near customer fabs, preventing large production losses from process interruption.

2012: G. Dan Hutcheson

Mr. Hutcheson has had a major impact on the industry. Most of the leading firms in the industry rely upon his research services, databases, and consulting services to plan and guide their strategic investments. His email newsletter, The Chip Insider®, contains a mix of industry insider facts, forecasts, market opportunities and threats, as well as industry debates among recipients. His book, Maxims of Tech, chronicles how our Industry’s leaders have innovated — providing key business lessons. Together, his activities empower executives with strategic and tactical marketing value.

2011: Franz Janker

Mr. Janker is recognized for his contributions to developing and implementing the concepts of "SERVICE AS A BUSINESS" as well as the Total Solutions Concept, which both evolved to be very valuable programs for Applied Materials and its customers.

2010: Martin van den Brink

Mr. Van den Brink has systematically aligned ASML’s core competencies to customer needs, which has led to continued market growth in lithography. His relentless push for lower cost of ownership via throughput improvements and tighter CDs has helped keep the lithography market alive.

2009: Peter Hanley

Mr. Hanley was recognized for the development of many original marketing and sales concepts (still implemented today) that lead directly to significant revenue and markets share gains for companies he has served. One of Hanley’s noted accomplishments was helping to keep Moore’s Law on track through the introduction of the “pay for performance” and “performance guarantee” business models, which changed the dynamics between customers and suppliers and expanded the served available market (SAM). In addition, Hanley was early to recognize the importance of the transition from aluminum to copper, and was instrumental in initiation and implementation of strategic (technology and marketing) programs in his company, effectively introducing copper two generations earlier than the ITRS predicted.

2008: Richard Hong

Mr. Hong was recognized for being the first person to successfully implement “In Line Monitoring” at a major semiconductor manufacturer (Samsung) and he proved that this concept would have a dramatic positive impact on yield and hence the way that all future semiconductor fabs through out the world would ultimately run their fabs utilizing this ILM concept.

2007: Richard E. Dyck

Mr. Dyck was recognized for facilitating greater cultural awareness and business relationships between the Japanese semiconductor industry and the U.S. semiconductor industry. He contributed greatly to the development of the industry in Japan and played a pivotal role in expanding the opportunities for U.S. equipment suppliers there.

2006: Aubrey C. (Bill) Tobey

Mr. Tobey was recognized for conceptualizing the wafer stepper as a natural extension of the D.W. Mann photorepeater, and for promoting its advantages over the then-popular e-beam direct exposure approach. Because of Tobey's marketing presence, the wafer stepper became one of the most significant tools in semiconductor manufacturing.

2005: Archie Hwang

Mr. Hwang is recognized for being the first to promote and develop a service infrastructure and culture for semiconductor equipment sales in Taiwan. He established local support and spare parts centers for fast response and offered free training to enable customers to quickly learn how to use equipment, which has since become the central strategy for any semiconductor equipment company entering the Taiwan market.

2004: Ed Braun

Mr. Braun was recognized for successfully developing products and alliances across multiple markets. This strategy helped offset high R&D costs for specific technologies and minimized the effects of the silicon cycles on small semiconductor equipment companies.

2003: Shigeru (Steve) Nakayama

Mr. Nakayama was recognized for his effective marketing efforts in unifying the semiconductor equipment and materials industry and securing international cooperation during the period of trade friction between the US and Japan in the 1980's. His great achievement was to successfully market the idea that global competitiveness is good for the entire industry.

2002: Jerry Hutcheson and Edward Segal

Mr. Hutcheson was recognized for pioneering and developing the semiconductor equipment industry’s first database. Mr. Segal was recognized for implementing the semiconductor industry’s first global sales and support organization.

2001: Jim Healy and Barry Rapozo

The Committee selected two industry veterans to receive the Award in 2001. They were honored for the establishment of relationship-based selling processes that identified and met customer needs.

2000: Arthur Zafiropoulo

Mr. Zafiropoulo was the first recipient of the Bob Graham Award. He was honored for the use of marketing to help win acceptance of plasma-etching and mix-and-match lithography